Contributors

Introduction

The BLEFriend makes it easy to get any USB enabled device talking to your BLE enabled phone or tablet using a standard USB CDC connection.

Please note that there are three versions of this board. An older v1.0 blue PCB which uses 16KB SRAM parts and can run firmware 0.5.0 and lower. A newer v2.0 black PCB that uses the latest 32KB parts and can run old firmware plus version 0.6.2 and higher, based on the FTDI bridge and with an SWD connector. A cost-optimized v3.0 board that uses a CP2104 USB chip and drops the SWD connector. v3.0 can run all of the same firmware as v2.0, and is the latest board available.

In it's simplest form, it works on the same principle as a common USB/Serial adapter (the FTDI Friend, for example!). Any data that you enter via your favorite terminal emulator on your development machine will be transferred over the air to the connected phone or tablet, and vice versa.

Why Not Just Use a BLE USB Dongle?

Good question! You can get a Bluetooth 4.0 USB dongle from the store already, and it's a useful tool to have (particularly on the Raspberry Pi or BBB), but that won't solve some problems out of the box.

To start with, Bluez (Linux) has a decent learning curve (and doesn't run on OS X if you're a Mac user). Windows 7 doesn't even support Bluetooth Low Energy, and on OS X you'll have to sort through the native Bluetooth APIs and development tools that require an annual paid license and specific license terms to access. There isn't a standard, open source, cross-platform way to talk BLE today.

With the BLEFriend, you can be up and running in under and hour on just about anything with a USB port, with easy migration across platforms and operating systems. It's not perfect (it's currently a peripheral mode only solution), but it's the easiest way you'll find to get any USB device talking to your iOS or Android device.

So it's a Fancy Pants Wireless UART Adapter?

The board is capable of much more than simulating a basic UART bridge (and this is still early days for the Bluefruit LE board family)! Thanks to an easy to learn AT command set, you can also create you own basic GATT Services and Characteristics, simulate Beacons, and change the way that the device advertises itself for other Bluetooth Low Energy devices to see.

You can even pick up a sniffer edition of the board that comes pre-flashed with special firmware that turns your BLEFriend into a low cost Bluetooth Low Energy sniffer, capturing data and pushing it out to Wireshark. We currently offer this as a seperate product, though, since the firmware isn't compatible with the over the air bootloader used on the standard products, but we'll address this in the future with a tutorial for J-Link owners, allowing you to switch between modes using your SWD debugger.

Why Use Adafruit's Module?

There are plenty of BLE modules out there, with varying quality on the HW design as well as the firmware. We always try to keep the bar as high as possible at Adafruit, and one of the biggest advantages of the BLEFriend and the entire Bluefruit LE family is that we wrote all of the firmware running on the devices ourelves from scratch.

We control every line of code that runs on our modules ... and so we aren't at the mercy of any third party vendors who may or may not be interested in keeping their code up to date or catering to our customer's needs.

Because we control everything about the product, we add features that are important to our customers, benefit from being able to use the latest Bluetooth specifications, can solve any issues that do come up without having to persuade a half-hearted firmware engineer on the other side of the planet, and we can even change Bluetooth SoCs entirely if the need ever arises!

Getting Started

If you just want to get up and running quickly, this is the right guide for you, and the QuickStart section should have you up and running in no time.

OUT OF STOCK NOTIFICATION

YOUR NAME

YOUR EMAIL

You have been successfully subscribed to the Notification List for this product and will therefore receive an e-mail from us when it is back in stock!

For security reasons, an e-mail has been sent to you acknowledging your subscription. Please remember that this subscription will not result in you receiving any e-mail from us about anything other than the restocking of this item.

If, for any reason, you would like to unsubscribe from the Notification List for this product you will find details of how to do so in the e-mail that has just been sent to you!

"A good scientist is a person with original ideas. A good engineer is a person who makes a design that works with as few original ideas as possible. There are no prima donnas in engineering"
- Freeman Dyson